Giuliani is a Jerk

Monday, January 07, 2008

MORE: I’m fairly certain about my Dem picks. I think Edwards is going to surprise again. If I had to do any flipping, I’d put Paul at #3 and Giuliani at #5 for the Repubs, but I think the Paulbearers are probably annoying the piss outta everyone in NH by now, so I don’t think they’ve converted as many indies as I would have predicted a week ago, and I still think, against my better judgment, that the New Hampshire folks are going to make Rudy pay for blowing them off, thus allowing the Thompzombies to squeak by.

Republican presidential candidates former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (front L) and U.S. Senator John McCain (front R) listen to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (front C) as he makes a point during the Fox News Presidential Forum at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire January 6, 2008. Actor and “Huckappendage” Chuck Norris (rear) pointed a semi-automatic weapon at Romney’s head for most of the forum.

Here’s a performance review of the five Republican participants in tonight’s Fox News Presidential Forum:

RUDOLPH GIULIANI: He started the evening off by tearing a Muslim baby in half with his bare hands, climbing up on the table and taking a dump on the Koran while his foreign policy expert Norman Podhoretz drew a pentagram on the studio floor using the child’s blood. Later Giulaini vigorously defended charges that New York was a sanctuary city during his tenure as mayor while he applied mascara and poured himself into a Vera Wang evening gown. He finished the evening by saying, “September 11th to me is the essence of why September 11th is and always will be September 11th and not anything else but September 11th, which occurred on September 11th and not on any other day but September 11th regardless of those people who want us to forget what happened on September 11th because it did happen on September 11th and that is why September 11th must be remembered for what it is ... September 11th. And to conclude, September 11th.”

FRED THOMPSON: He spent most of the evening consumed with the tasks of eating steaming bowls of cream of wheat and bottling his own farts, occasionally breaking in to utter things like, “Mandate mumble mumble ACLU mumble mumble border security mumble mumble islamofascism mumble mumble fart jar.” By the end of the forum he had curled up on the floor with his pants around his ankles and fallen fast asleep.

MIKE HUCKABEE: Following moderator Chris Wallace’s initial question regarding Huckabee referring to George Bush’s “arrogance and bunker mentality,” Huckabee pulled out his bass guitar and began playing Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4.” When Wallace protested Chuck Norris walked over to the moderator and punched him in the throat, causing the broadcast to be delayed for several minutes. Wallace’s toughest question directed at Huckabee for the rest of the forum was “What is your favorite ice cream flavor?” to which Huckabee replied, “Sanctity of life.”

MITT ROMNEY: Visibly shaken by having Chuck Norris point a semi-automatic weapon at his head during the entire forum, Romney just prattled on about sports for most of the evening, saying things like “If Willie Mays hadn’t stayed with the American Basketball Association after winning the Stanley Cup, Billie Jean King would have gone on to dominate the Cy Young Award. And, ummmm, pole vault.” At the end of the evening all of the candidates except for Thompson, who was asleep under the table, beat Romney to a bloody pulp just because they all think he’s a douchebag.

JOHN MCCAIN: Relishing his current front-runner status in the New Hampshire race, McCain just kept barking out the word “maverick” and spinning around in his chair during the beginning of the forum. At one point when Wallace asked him if he still stood behind the McCain-Feingold act, McCain grew agitated, ran out of the studio, headbutted a female production assistant and started wildly fucking a Coke machine. He then sprinted outside and tried to half-nelson a Prius for twenty minutes. After he gave up, he returned to the studio, poked his head in the door and yelped, “Maverick!”

Thursday, January 03, 2008

That pretty much crystallizes the differences we’re seeing between the Democrats and the Republicans running for president this year. It’s your choice America. What’s it going to be? Giving a leg up to your fellow countrymen or letting pee stream down your own?

Monday, December 17, 2007

Over the weekend the beltway crowd has pushed forth the meme that there’s some kind of John McCain surge in the works, but I just ain’t buying it. First of all, poll-wise, there’s just no evidence of it, so all they seem to be running with are some recent newspaper endorsements he’s received (and, please, the endorsement of the sniveling “Independent Democrat” Joe Lieberman won’t help at all). Let’s take a look at what impact those newspaper endorsements will have according to Rasmussen:

Just 4% of Americans say an endorsement by their local newspaper will make them more likely to vote for a candidate. Thirteen percent (13%) say it will likely have the opposite impact.

McCain is dead in the water barring some weird confluence of extraordinary circumstances. I still think Romney’s going to be their guy. The Huckabubble will burst relatively soon and Mitt’s sitting on piles of cash. Thompson is a dud and Giuliani is covered in ooze.

MORE: I don’t see Ron Paul doing much in Iowa, but look for a surprise showing by him in New Hampshire. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict he’ll come in third behind Romney and McCain.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

There’s a little bit for both liberals and conservatives to hate about Rudy in this excerpt from Meet the Next President:

Rudy Giuliani says he wanted to deport all 400,000 illegal immigrants from New York City when he was mayor, but ended up welcoming most of those who were “causing me no trouble.”

In an interview for the new book “Meet the Next President,” Giuliani lamented that the Immigration and Naturalization Service deported only 700 to 1,500 of the city’s 400,000 aliens each year during his mayoralty. Giuliani said it was obvious the INS was not about to increase deportation “from 700 or 1,500 to 400,000.”

“If they could, I would have turned all the people over. It would have helped me. I would have had a smaller population. I would have had fewer problems,” the Republican presidential candidate told The Examiner in an interview.

RUSSERT DOES GOOD: If you missed it this morning, Tim Russert was pretty aggressive with Rudy Guliani this morning. Best Russert quote: “Using that reasoning, would it be appropriate for a president to provide Secret Service protection for his mistress?” “Best” Guiliani quote: “I don’t make many mistakes, but when I make them, they’re big ones.” You can watch it here. Transcript here.

(Please note: My internet connection was down nearly all day, so this is all I have for you. It’s driving me absolutely crazy at the moment trying to get anywhere on the innertubes. Yeeeeeaaaaaarrrgh!)

Friday, December 07, 2007

Dear Daily News, a “girlfriend” is something you have when you’re not a married man, a “mistress” is something you have when you’re a married man fucking around on your wife. Thank you.

It looks like the Noble Knight of Nineelevenstan was strong-arming the NYPD to play limo service for Judi “First Mistress” Nathan long before it had been recently reported. The New York Daily Newshas it all:

Judith Nathan got taxpayer-funded chauffeur services from the NYPD earlier than previously disclosed - even before her affair with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was revealed, witnesses and sources tell the Daily News.

“It went on for months before the affair was public,” said Lee Degenstein, 52, a retired Smith Barney vice president who formerly lived at 200 E. 94th St., Nathan’s old building.

“It was going on longer than anybody thought,” added Degenstein, who, along with others in the neighborhood, said they often saw Nathan hopping into unmarked NYPD cars in early 2000, before the affair was revealed that May.

When pressed by The News Thursday, aides to the Republican presidential hopeful conceded that Nathan got police protection “sporadically” before December 2000 - the previously acknowledged beginning of her taxpayer-funded detail.

Then-Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said in January 2001 the NYPD assigned Nathan round-the-clock protection the month before because of an unspecified threat against her on a streetcorner near her home. He insisted at a news conference she had no guards until then.

Thursday, Giuliani aides changed their story. They said Nathan had received previously undisclosed “threats” earlier in 2000, and that protection was provided at those times.

They refused to provide dates, describe the nature of the threats or confirm - as witnesses and a law enforcement source now contend - that the protection began before she was publicly identified as the married mayor’s girlfriend in May 2000.

That would make the threat justification all the more puzzling, because she wasn’t a public figure.

[...]

A law enforcement source familiar with mayoral protection said Nathan got bodyguards as far back as 1999, shortly after the affair began.

“If she had to go shopping, errands, that’s where you went,” the source said.

Other residents at the building said they often saw Nathan coming and going with two well-dressed drivers, who occasionally toted her packages.

“She was always coming back with shopping bags from the different well-known stores in New York,” said Jacqueline Elman, a building resident for 12 years who walked her dog regularly and often spotted Nathan, who became the third Mrs. Giuliani in 2003.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

I was going to write about the Little Green Footfungi’s reaction to the Omaha shopping mall murders, but Lawyers, Guns and Money beat me to it. I know nutters have come up with a lot of ridiculous ideas in recent years, but Sudden Jihad Syndrome just may be the absolute dumbest. It lays bear their intense paranoia, full-throttle Islamophobia, and knuckle-dragging numbskullery all in one simple little phrase.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

“He treated the media like mushrooms,” said Rob Polner, a former Newsday reporter who edited the book “America’s Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani’s New York.” “He kept them in the dark and fed them a lot of manure.”

Sunday, December 02, 2007

UPDATE: Figured I’d check into YouTube to see how the dreadful pro-Rudy “President” “parody” has been doing since we snickered at it back in mid-November. Only a little over 6000 views on YouTube is pretty dismal for a video someone obviously dumped a lot of money into, including advance promotion and building a whole web site for it. I guarantee the video embedded above, which was probably just crapped out on a home computer, will have at least that many views in a couple of days. But remember, Republicans are much better with money.

As New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, according to previously undisclosed government records.

The documents, obtained by Politico under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, show that the mayoral costs had nothing to do with the functions of the little-known city offices that defrayed his tabs, including agencies responsible for regulating loft apartments, aiding the disabled and providing lawyers for indigent defendants.

At the time, the mayor’s office refused to explain the accounting to city auditors, citing “security.”

The Hamptons visits resulted in hotel, gas and other costs for Giuliani’s New York Police Department security detail.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Since 2002, Msgr. Alan Placa has worked for Rudy Giuliani as a consultant at Giuliani Partners. In 2003 a grand jury report of Suffolk County, NY, accused Placa of sexually abusing multiple victims.
A spokeswoman for Giuliani Partners told Salon Magazine that the former New York City mayor believes Placa was “unjustly accused.” The grand jury report contains accusations from three alleged victims, including two children (Placa is named as “Priest F” in the report.) According to testimony before the grand jury, “Everyone in the school knew to stay away from Priest F.”
[...]
Placa and Giuliani have known each other since they attended Loughlin High School in Brooklyn. They became close friends and occasionally double-dated. After high school, they attended Manhattan College and joined the same fraternity, Phi Rho Pi.
Placa was ordained a Catholic priest in 1970. He served in various parishes and a preparatory seminary on Long Island before working for Catholic Charities and the Diocese of Rockville Centre. At Giuliani’s first wedding, Placa was the best man. Placa helped him get his annulment in 1982 before he officiated at Giuliani’s wedding to Donna Hanover in 1984. Placa also officiated at funeral services for Giuliani’s mother and father and baptized both of his children.
Because Placa has a law degree from Hofstra University, he became a legal consultant to the diocese and was part of a three-person team reviewing charges of sexual abuse by priests. According to Newsday, Placa was the “chief architect” of the Rockville Diocese sexual abuse policy.
In addition to containing accusations against Placa, the Suffolk County grand jury claimed that the evidence “clearly demonstrates that diocesan officials agreed to engage in conduct that resulted in the prevention, hindrance, and delay in the discovery of criminal conduct by priests.”
The grand jury report includes excerpts from a letter in which Placa brags about his ability to settle multi-million dollar clergy abuse claims for “$20,000 to $100,000.”
During the 1980s, Placa was the legal advisor to the House of Affirmation in Worchester, MA, which offered counseling services to priests accused of sexual abuse. One person who worked at this facility called it a “pedophile boot camp.” An abuse victim referred to it as a “breeding ground for sexual predators.”
In June 2002, Giuliani called Placa “one of the finest people I know.”